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Monthly Archives: May 2019

As my sister and, honestly anyone that has ever met me even once can attest, this holiday is a tough one. In the days that lead up to it I can be short tempered and easily emotional, letting all the pain loss be felt, whether I realize it at the time or not. This year has been different though. This year it surprised me in a new way.

While having breakfast with my wife yesterday, I put down my fork and quietly said “I’ve never really thought about how hard Mother’s Day must have been for my parents. I can’t even imagine”

I’ve spent more of my life than not, 26 years to be exact, grieving my mother’s illness and subsequent death. Nearly all the choices I’ve made or failed to make can be attributed to that grief. My life was profoundly affected by the experience of losing her and everyone I’m close with knows that.

What they may not know is that my parents lost their mothers on the same day in the same year. That’s right, both mother and mother-in-law suddenly and unexpectedly gone on the same day in 1972 when my dad was just 34 and my mom 29 (a year younger than I was when she passed). I wrote about my 4yr old memory of that day in here The Day I Picked Iron Man and My Grandmas Died. Truth really is stranger than fiction.

How could they have possibly endured that? I’ve limped my way through the past quarter century hamstrung by my sadness and have spent every Mother’s Day feeling loss rather than celebrating who she was.

Today is different though. Today is about the gratitude I feel for both my parents. Today is about assuring them that their mothers would be so proud of them and the lives they’ve lived. Today is about thanking them for the tenacity they had to live through such incredible losses and still give my sister and me an amazing life.